One of the biggest names in women’s college basketball has joined the Central Michigan coaching staff.
Gail Goestenkors, a member of the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association Hall of Fame, will be the Chippewas’ associate head coach, working alongside second-year coach Heather Oesterle in a program that has become the class of the Mid-American Conference and a mid-major power.
“I am very excited and thankful to Heather and to Central Michigan for the opportunity to get back in the college game,” Goestenkors said. “I’m excited to become a part of the CMU family.
“I have had so many incredible experiences with basketball, coaching college and in the WNBA and the Olympics and then working for ESPN and then consulting. But nothing compares to coaching women’s college basketball. There’s an incredible energy about it. I’m just so excited to get back in.”
Goestenkors’ resumé is among the most impressive in the game. She coached Texas from 2007-12 and Duke from 1992-2007 before working as a consultant and then assistant coach with the WNBA’s Los Angeles Sparks and Indiana Fever.
She served as an analyst for ESPN women’s basketball broadcasts from 2014-18 and has been the co-owner since 2018 of Coaching Full Circle, working with members of the MAC, Big Ten, Southeastern and Atlantic Coast conferences. She was an assistant coach for the U.S. Olympic team at the 2004 Games in Athens and at the 2008 Games in Beijing, helping the Americans to gold medals in both instances.
Goestenkors is a two-time Associated Press National Coach of the Year Award winner and seven times was named the ACC Coach of the Year at Duke. She took the Blue Devils to the Final Four four times, to the national title game twice, to eight ACC regular-season championships, and won five-consecutive ACC Tournament titles.
She led Duke and Texas to a combined 496-163 record. In 2006, Goestenkors was named by USA Basketball as its Coach of the Year.
“I haven’t stopped smiling in two weeks since I talked to Gail for the first time,” said Oesterle, who led the Chippewas to their fourth-consecutive MAC regular-season title in 2019-20, her first season at the helm of the program. “It’s big for our program, it’s big for our university – you’re talking about someone with a lot of credibility in the women’s basketball world coming to Mount Pleasant, Michigan, and I can’t tell you how excited I am to work with her every day, to learn from her.
“I think it says a lot about where our program is, and I think it also says a lot about the people that we have here — the players. We have really good people here from the staff on down and we’re really excited about this opportunity to work with Gail.”
Goestenkors, who hails from Waterford, played at Saginaw Valley State from 1981-85. During her first three years at SVSU, former Chippewa coach Sue Guevara was an assistant coach. The two remained friends as they made their respective climbs through the coaching ranks.
Guevara, with Oesterle by her side, built the CMU program into the power that it has become. Goestenkors and Oesterle met two years ago when Goestenkors’ Coaching Full Circle company performed consulting work for Guevara and the Chippewas.
“We watched most of their practices, all of their games, we came on campus and met with the staff and we were so impressed with the way that they run their program,” Goestenkors said. “It’s first class and it’s so much fun to watch. They think outside the box and their offense is so high powered with the 3-point shooting and the creativity that they use. Really, with everything that they do, I was always very impressed with them.
“Last year we continued to watch Heather and I couldn’t have been more impressed with a first-year head coach. Sue did such a good job mentoring Heather. (Oesterle) took the reins, she’s wise beyond her years, and she’s a student of the game; she’s always asking questions and she’s curious and she wants to continue to grow.
“For me, it’s a really good fit where I can help Heather in every way and any way possible, also get back in the game and do what I’m most passionate about, and that’s helping young women – players — explore their talent, find their voice, stand in their power, become the very best version of themselves both on the court and off the court.”
After earning a bachelor’s degree with a major in physical education from SVSU, Goestenkors served as a graduate assistant at Iowa State and then as an assistant coach at Purdue from 1986-02.
Goestenkors’ players have accumulated an impressive array of individual awards. Included in that total are eight National Player of the Year Awards, five Kodak All-Americans, seven AP All-Americans, seven National Freshman of the Year Award winners, and five ACC Player of the Year Award winners.
In addition, her players earned a combined 53 all-conference honors in the ACC and in the Big 12 and a combined 75 academic all-conference accolades in the two leagues. Eleven of Goestenkors’ former players went on to play in the WNBA.
“She knows the type of people who are in this program and that’s who she wants to work with and that’s who she wants to coach,” Oesterle said. “We have great kids here. They’re unbelievably talented, they work their butts off. They’re good people and I think she wants to be around that kind of atmosphere.
“Gail’s the ultimate team player. You’re bringing in somebody who has pro experience, college experience, Olympic experience and she is so humble, and I think that’s what you could say about our entire staff.
“The moment we don’t want to learn or the moment we think we know it all is the moment you get out of coaching. She doesn’t have an ego; she’s very humble, she’s very, very knowledgeable, and we’re just excited for the opportunity to learn from her.”
